Checking the Refrigerator

Steven Grant's Fun! Fun! Fun! column in this month's TCJ #265 "Misogyny Crisis" (p 168-169) takes a look back on a subject Gail Simone has been dealing with since 1999 when she posted "the list"--misogyny in comic books today. As Grant's column - which introduces itself in the context of the recently concluded Identity Crisis - points out, "Some of the brutality against women in comics, as in Killing Joke and Identity Crisis, can be casually dismissed as a dramatic device. The stories don't approve of the behavior; there's no implied endorsement." (169)

So which is the case? Have gender roles really been leveled in comics; or is this the dirty little secret of modern comics? The challenge posed to the aforementioned justification of violence against women in comics is that such acts are rampant and continue to use female figures merely as vehicles to promote stronger male characters. The debate grows more poignant when such events (see Simone's list for examples) continue to define gender dynamics in hero books. Are DC and Marvel writing for a gender neutral audience?

It's true that male heroes don't seem to suffer any discrimination where deaths are concerned (although being dead does qualify one for Simone's list), but one of Grant's best points comes at the end of the article where he brings up Authority's Apollo and the threat of sexual violence against men versus women. When was the last time you saw your favorite superhero raped, threatened with rape, tortured, or sexually humiliated?

Though I don't have any answers to this dilemma, it does beg scrutiny of the state of the superhero comic today, if indeed we are not still stuck in (as Grant puts it) "The Perils of Pauline, filtered through Hustler and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies."